The drop, reported by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, reflects the growing shift of readers to the Internet, where newspaper readership has climbed, and also a strategy by many major papers to shed unprofitable or marginally profitable print circulation.
Among the nation’s largest newspapers, only a handful held their own or registered slight increases in overall paid circulation for the period from April 1 to Sept. 30. Most papers showed significant declines, both weekday and Sunday.
For the first time, the audit bureau released, along with the traditional circulation figures, numbers produced by Scarborough Reports that reflected the total number of readers, both in print and online this marks the first time that such an independent analysis has been done, providing a benchmark for future reports.
Executives noted that newspaper Web sites — unlike their print counterparts — drew a lot of young adults, who are sought by advertisers. But advertisers have generally not considered an online reader to be as valuable as a print reader, so it remains to be seen what effect the numbers will have.
The audit bureau report showed a 2.6 percent decline in paid weekday circulation from the year-earlier period for more than 500 newspapers whose figures were available, and a 4.6 percent drop on Sundays for more than 600 newspapers.
USA Today, the top-selling weekday newspaper in the country — — had a 1 percent increase in circulation, to about 2.3 million.
Wall Street Journal , fell 1.5 percent, to about 2 million
online subscriptions topped 1 million.
New York Times – lost 4.5 percent of its weekday circulation (to less than 1.04 million) and 7.6 percent of its Sunday circulation (to 1.5 million).
Weekday Circulation Figures
Los Angeles Times 780,000 Sunday 1.1 million.
New York Post 667,000
The Daily News 681,000
A coalition of consumer groups called yesterday for the creation of a do-not-track list that would permit internet users to opt out of behavioral tracking programs that use consumer data to deliver targeted ads. The groups seek disclosure notices saying that online ads resulted from behavioral tracking, and consumer review and editing of their ad network profiles. The proposal came as the Federal Trade Commission prepared for two days of meetings about online privacy.
A number of websites and services have developed around the need to measure the flow of traffic over the internet. One of best-known is Internet Traffic Report. Here is their self-description:
Thursday’s edition of The Hindu predicts a rapidly increasing legal off-shoring industry in India. Their predictions: 1. Corporations, not Western law firms, will drive the market in the years ahead. 2. Another way that corporations will drive the market, indirectly, is by obtaining flat (or fixed) rate billing from their outside counsel, instead of hourly billing. Flat rate billing will cause many law firms to realise that offshore providers can be important allies in improving their bottom line, rather than competitive enemies. 
Thomson Corp. agreed to acquire the Deloitte Tax LLP Property Tax Services business for an undisclosed amount. The PTS division, which employs more than 420 professionals, provides property tax compliance outsourcing and consulting services, such as real estate appeals and complex property valuation. Thomson said the business will become part of its Tax & Accounting segment upon completion. 
Data from CTIA, the Wireless Association, show that texting is still in a growth spurt: 158.6 billion text messages were sent in the USA in 2006, up from 81 billion the year before. The British-based Mobile Data Association dates text messaging to December 1992, when a British engineer sent the message “Merry Christmas” to a colleague from a computer to a mobile handset.